{"title":"Quentin Kammer, Jean-Philippe Narboux and Henri Wagner (eds). C. I. Lewis: The A Priori and the Given","authors":"Robert Sinclair","doi":"10.1086/719032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/719032","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"184 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77838795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
An ancient cosmological debate lies behind the spatial part of the first antinomy in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Against the Aristotelian conception of a finite universe, a thought experiment proposed we imagine ourselves situated on the boundary of the world: what happens if we stretch a hand beyond the boundary? This article first shows that aspects of this debate persist in the cosmological claims of Huygens, Wolff, and Crusius. With his presentation of opposing arguments in the first antinomy, Kant famously rejected both sides of the debate and asserted that we cannot meaningfully inquire into the spatial boundary of the world. I then argue that the critical-period Kant nevertheless does not simply dismiss the issue of an outer boundary of the world: he rather reconceives it as the question of the boundary of the legitimate use of our cognitive faculties. The cosmological question of the boundary of the world is transformed—from Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation through his Reflexionen of the 1770s to the first Critique—into the critical question of the boundary of reason.
{"title":"From the Boundary of the World to the Boundary of Reason: The First Antinomy and the Development of Kant’s Critical Philosophy","authors":"S. Howard","doi":"10.1086/718992","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718992","url":null,"abstract":"An ancient cosmological debate lies behind the spatial part of the first antinomy in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Against the Aristotelian conception of a finite universe, a thought experiment proposed we imagine ourselves situated on the boundary of the world: what happens if we stretch a hand beyond the boundary? This article first shows that aspects of this debate persist in the cosmological claims of Huygens, Wolff, and Crusius. With his presentation of opposing arguments in the first antinomy, Kant famously rejected both sides of the debate and asserted that we cannot meaningfully inquire into the spatial boundary of the world. I then argue that the critical-period Kant nevertheless does not simply dismiss the issue of an outer boundary of the world: he rather reconceives it as the question of the boundary of the legitimate use of our cognitive faculties. The cosmological question of the boundary of the world is transformed—from Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation through his Reflexionen of the 1770s to the first Critique—into the critical question of the boundary of reason.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"9 1","pages":"225 - 241"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79676053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
From 1754 to 1756 Kant wrote on such central, related topics as the axial rotation of the Earth, the theory of heat, and the composition of matter, focusing on space, force, and motion. It has been noted that each of these topics pertains to his 1755 Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, in which he drew on extant cosmogonies and the analogical form of Newtonianism developed by naturalists including Buffon, Haller, and Thomas Wright. How does Kant build on these various sources? This article aims to provide a nuanced account of specific features of the relation between natural history and natural philosophy in Kant’s early developmental theory of the universe and to illuminate the strategy that guides his innovative, selective appropriation of contemporaneous insights.
{"title":"A “Physiogony” of the Heavens: Kant’s Early View of Universal Natural History","authors":"C. Ferrini","doi":"10.1086/718995","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718995","url":null,"abstract":"From 1754 to 1756 Kant wrote on such central, related topics as the axial rotation of the Earth, the theory of heat, and the composition of matter, focusing on space, force, and motion. It has been noted that each of these topics pertains to his 1755 Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, in which he drew on extant cosmogonies and the analogical form of Newtonianism developed by naturalists including Buffon, Haller, and Thomas Wright. How does Kant build on these various sources? This article aims to provide a nuanced account of specific features of the relation between natural history and natural philosophy in Kant’s early developmental theory of the universe and to illuminate the strategy that guides his innovative, selective appropriation of contemporaneous insights.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"14 1","pages":"261 - 285"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74466878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In September 1931, a panel discussion was convened at Central Hall Westminster on the subject of the ‘evolution of the universe’ at the centenary meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Center stage was what to do about the evolving universe being younger than the stars, evidently a paradox in the relativistic study of the evolving universe at the time. Here, we discuss two diametrically opposed reactions to the paradox, which were each broadcast at the meeting by Lemaître and de Sitter, respectively. As we argue, that both could be projected to the public as viable reflects an unsettled question at the foundations of the then-nascent discipline: What is the role for considerations of scale in relativistic cosmology?
{"title":"Better Appreciating the Scale of It: Lemaître and de Sitter at the BAAS Centenary","authors":"Siska De Baerdemaeker, Mike D. Schneider","doi":"10.1086/719017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/719017","url":null,"abstract":"In September 1931, a panel discussion was convened at Central Hall Westminster on the subject of the ‘evolution of the universe’ at the centenary meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Center stage was what to do about the evolving universe being younger than the stars, evidently a paradox in the relativistic study of the evolving universe at the time. Here, we discuss two diametrically opposed reactions to the paradox, which were each broadcast at the meeting by Lemaître and de Sitter, respectively. As we argue, that both could be projected to the public as viable reflects an unsettled question at the foundations of the then-nascent discipline: What is the role for considerations of scale in relativistic cosmology?","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"5 1","pages":"170 - 188"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86652284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, I defend causal presentism in the historiography of science. In causal presentism, the historiography of science studies events, processes, and practices that were causally relevant to the development of the present science. I argue that causal presentism has three main virtues. First, causal presentism avoids the conceptual problems that the historiography of science has recognized at its core. Second, causal presentism provides a clear account of what counts as historical explanatory understanding about science. Third, causal presentism enables novel ways to address several conceptual and methodological problems in the historiography of science. The conclusion is that causal presentism is a distinctively strong position with respect to the historiography of science.
{"title":"In Defense of Causal Presentism","authors":"Veli Virmajoki","doi":"10.1086/718993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718993","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I defend causal presentism in the historiography of science. In causal presentism, the historiography of science studies events, processes, and practices that were causally relevant to the development of the present science. I argue that causal presentism has three main virtues. First, causal presentism avoids the conceptual problems that the historiography of science has recognized at its core. Second, causal presentism provides a clear account of what counts as historical explanatory understanding about science. Third, causal presentism enables novel ways to address several conceptual and methodological problems in the historiography of science. The conclusion is that causal presentism is a distinctively strong position with respect to the historiography of science.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"78 1","pages":"68 - 96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78788741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article I aim to demonstrate that Rudolf Carnap’s analysis of the application of information theory within physics, an analysis that is an intellectual-historical precedent of current philosophical criticisms of the information theoretical tendency, is justified. First, Carnap and Bar-Hillel underlined the unjustified ‘semantification’ of Shannon entropy. Furthermore, Carnap criticized the ‘physicalization’ of Shannon entropy, but that criticism was not accepted by the physics community of the 1950s. Finally, in the posthumously published Two Essays on Entropy, Carnap developed a critical assessment of entropy concepts that showed deep conceptual and interpretative deficiencies in Jaynes’s and Brillouin’s informational approaches to thermophysics.
{"title":"A Philosopher against the Bandwagon: Carnap and the Informationalization of Thermal Physics","authors":"Javier Anta","doi":"10.1086/718416","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718416","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I aim to demonstrate that Rudolf Carnap’s analysis of the application of information theory within physics, an analysis that is an intellectual-historical precedent of current philosophical criticisms of the information theoretical tendency, is justified. First, Carnap and Bar-Hillel underlined the unjustified ‘semantification’ of Shannon entropy. Furthermore, Carnap criticized the ‘physicalization’ of Shannon entropy, but that criticism was not accepted by the physics community of the 1950s. Finally, in the posthumously published Two Essays on Entropy, Carnap developed a critical assessment of entropy concepts that showed deep conceptual and interpretative deficiencies in Jaynes’s and Brillouin’s informational approaches to thermophysics.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"4 1","pages":"43 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90628767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
It is the goal of this article to present and discuss the phenomenological interpretation of quantum mechanics of the twentieth-century Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri. After presenting an introduction to Zubiri and his relationship with phenomenology, we discuss the prominent role of the natural sciences, namely, physics, in the author’s philosophical system. To a certain extent, one can say that, in the footsteps of Edmund Husserl, one of Zubiri’s chief concerns was to develop a philosophical system that could accommodate the discoveries of contemporary science. Following a brief presentation of Zubiri’s discussion on physics, the article focuses on his interpretation of quantum mechanics. As we shall see, Zubiri’s original interpretation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in terms of the phenomenological notion of light may provide a significant, although limited, contribution for a deeper understanding of quantum indeterminacy. In addition, we suggest that the Zubirian notions of reality, intelligence, and actuality, which dominate the last stage of his philosophy, may provide a key hermeneutic framework that allows a fresh philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics.
{"title":"The Quest for the Dynamic Structure of Reality: Xavier Zubiri, Phenomenology, and Quantum Mechanics","authors":"Bruno Nobre, João Carlos Onofre Pinto","doi":"10.1086/716961","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716961","url":null,"abstract":"It is the goal of this article to present and discuss the phenomenological interpretation of quantum mechanics of the twentieth-century Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri. After presenting an introduction to Zubiri and his relationship with phenomenology, we discuss the prominent role of the natural sciences, namely, physics, in the author’s philosophical system. To a certain extent, one can say that, in the footsteps of Edmund Husserl, one of Zubiri’s chief concerns was to develop a philosophical system that could accommodate the discoveries of contemporary science. Following a brief presentation of Zubiri’s discussion on physics, the article focuses on his interpretation of quantum mechanics. As we shall see, Zubiri’s original interpretation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in terms of the phenomenological notion of light may provide a significant, although limited, contribution for a deeper understanding of quantum indeterminacy. In addition, we suggest that the Zubirian notions of reality, intelligence, and actuality, which dominate the last stage of his philosophy, may provide a key hermeneutic framework that allows a fresh philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"31 1","pages":"22 - 42"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86878504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is a milestone of twentieth-century physics. We sketch the history that led to the formulation of the principle, and we recall the objections of Grete Hermann and Niels Bohr. Then we explain that there are in fact two uncertainty principles. One was published by Heisenberg in the Zeitschrift für Physik of March 1927 and subsequently targeted by Bohr and Hermann. The other one was introduced by Earle Kennard in the same journal a couple of months later. While Kennard’s principle remains untarnished, the principle of Heisenberg has recently been criticized in a way that is very different from the objections by Bohr and Hermann: there are reasons to believe that Heisenberg’s formula is not valid. Experimental results seem to support this claim.
{"title":"How Certain is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle?","authors":"David Atkinson, J. Peijnenburg","doi":"10.1086/716930","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716930","url":null,"abstract":"Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is a milestone of twentieth-century physics. We sketch the history that led to the formulation of the principle, and we recall the objections of Grete Hermann and Niels Bohr. Then we explain that there are in fact two uncertainty principles. One was published by Heisenberg in the Zeitschrift für Physik of March 1927 and subsequently targeted by Bohr and Hermann. The other one was introduced by Earle Kennard in the same journal a couple of months later. While Kennard’s principle remains untarnished, the principle of Heisenberg has recently been criticized in a way that is very different from the objections by Bohr and Hermann: there are reasons to believe that Heisenberg’s formula is not valid. Experimental results seem to support this claim.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"1 1","pages":"1 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81665840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern standard big bang cosmology was preceded by a 15-year controversy with the rival steady-state theory of the universe. At a time when cosmologically relevant observations were scarce and cosmology was widely regarded as an immature science, or not a science at all, much of the debate took place by means of arguments that were essentially philosophical. Remarkably, professional philosophers, including some of the key figures of Anglo-American philosophy of science, took an active part in the debate; no less remarkably, the involved astronomers and physicists sometimes listened to them. This article reviews the controversy over the steady-state theory as seen from the perspective of contemporary philosophy of science and offers an appraisal of how and to what extent philosophers and scientists entered a dialogue.
{"title":"Philosophical Contexts of the Steady-State Universe","authors":"H. Kragh","doi":"10.1086/717053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/717053","url":null,"abstract":"Modern standard big bang cosmology was preceded by a 15-year controversy with the rival steady-state theory of the universe. At a time when cosmologically relevant observations were scarce and cosmology was widely regarded as an immature science, or not a science at all, much of the debate took place by means of arguments that were essentially philosophical. Remarkably, professional philosophers, including some of the key figures of Anglo-American philosophy of science, took an active part in the debate; no less remarkably, the involved astronomers and physicists sometimes listened to them. This article reviews the controversy over the steady-state theory as seen from the perspective of contemporary philosophy of science and offers an appraisal of how and to what extent philosophers and scientists entered a dialogue.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"66 1","pages":"129 - 145"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85822650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The aim of this special issue is to explore varieties of animism in western European natural philosophy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The issue focuses on “natural-philosophical animism,” by which we mean the position that the soul, along with its various faculties and powers, is integral to the functioning of nature as a whole, or to the functioning of some natural entities. The term “animism” was coined in the second half of the eighteenth century, first in French and then migrating to English, and it emerged in connection with the work of the Halle professor of medicine Georg Ernst Stahl (1659–1734). It came to be used as a general term for a variety of positions that challenged the mechanist and materialist accounts of nature that proliferated during the early modern period. Soon enough, “animism” became a catchall for doctrines that lost out to modern science. This opposition between animist and material, or animist and mechanical, has profoundly marked the history of sciences: one of the achievements of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment was, the usual story goes, to remove the soul and its forces from scientific investigation.However, when we reconsider the history of animism from the Renaissance on, we find complex overlays of the animate and materialist (or, later, animate and mechanical) in the same
{"title":"Special Issue Introduction","authors":"B. Demarest, J. Regier, C. Wolfe","doi":"10.1086/715975","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715975","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this special issue is to explore varieties of animism in western European natural philosophy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The issue focuses on “natural-philosophical animism,” by which we mean the position that the soul, along with its various faculties and powers, is integral to the functioning of nature as a whole, or to the functioning of some natural entities. The term “animism” was coined in the second half of the eighteenth century, first in French and then migrating to English, and it emerged in connection with the work of the Halle professor of medicine Georg Ernst Stahl (1659–1734). It came to be used as a general term for a variety of positions that challenged the mechanist and materialist accounts of nature that proliferated during the early modern period. Soon enough, “animism” became a catchall for doctrines that lost out to modern science. This opposition between animist and material, or animist and mechanical, has profoundly marked the history of sciences: one of the achievements of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment was, the usual story goes, to remove the soul and its forces from scientific investigation.However, when we reconsider the history of animism from the Renaissance on, we find complex overlays of the animate and materialist (or, later, animate and mechanical) in the same","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"99 1","pages":"494 - 501"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79264880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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